File XR
by Hawk197
Summary: A video file up uploaded onto Fang's Blog. A nameless female mutant tells of what happened to her, and how she is now so powerful that not even the flock could stop her. Intrigued, the flock set off to find her. They aren't the only ones.
1. Chapter 1

_*Click*_

 _*Static*_

 _The image on the screen is dark and blurry. Details are thick and indistinct, indefinite._

 _Camera suddenly pans up, and focuses in on a girl who appears to be holding the camera at arm's length._

" _Hello? Is this on?"_

 _She reaches to the side of the camera and fiddles with a knob on the side. She intently studies the screen, then, dark green eyes appearing satisfied, she nods, once, then continues talking._

" _I don't know who will find this, or what shape the Earth will be in when this is found. But, you see, I have no choice._

" _I am part of a government experiment, something that has been kept secret for many, many years. I'm not… human. The government has been playing with ways to make humans more durable, stronger, smarter, tougher. Well, I'm all those things, but one aspect of the experiment failed: I can't feel pain. I could fight myself to death and not know it. People who can't feel pain are liabilities; we're willing to take more risks because we know it can't hurt us. Nothing can._

" _After determining that the experiment has no hope of being salvaged, the scientist were told to terminate us." She glances behind her right shoulder. Sunlight glints off her long blonde hair. "Before they could, the government collapsed. I alone was able to escape the fire pits and make it out here._

" _They won't be able to find me. I can go places they can't." She takes a step back and opens what appears to be a pair of bat wings. "They miscalculated the amount of bat DNA we would need for echolocation, the intended effect. The scientists accidentally gave us their wings as well. I'm saying this so that when a new government forms, it won't make the same mistakes. For the rest of my life, I won't be able to live in society because, before I was born, someone played with my genes and made me a mutant freak. Forever._

" _However, these are troubled times. War has broken out across many nations as each fight for control of the survivors, this_ Maximum Ride _and her flock. If any of them were to get their hands on me-" She breathes out shakily. "I would be the perfect weapon. Fast, strong, hard to kill, can't be stopped or overwhelmed by pain or injury. I can fly higher than most weapons can fire. I couldn't be stopped, not even by the immortal flock."_

 _She flinches as a branch snaps behind her. She goes completely still, not even breathing for several minutes. After a quarter of an hour, she turns back. " I can't stay." She mouths, so softly the camera just barely picks it up. "I'm leaving now, and no-one will ever hear from me again. I know a place where no-one can access it without wings or a helicopter, and most of those were destroyed when the world ended the first time. Who ever you are, goodbye. If you're like me… Well. I'll find you." She opens her wings again._

 _*click*_

The man in the black suit stood still, watching the screen as it went dark. After it had, he said softly to the man standing behind him, "This was posted to 'Fang's Blog'?" The other man inclined his head silently. The boss - he was clearly in charge - nods, as if something had been decided.

"Find her."

The second man nodded, pulling his pistol from its holster and walking out the door, shutting it soundlessly behind him. He never looked back.


	2. Chapter 2

"Whoa…" The Gasman breathed. "Holy sh-" He caught my glare halfway through the word and quickly changed it. " -Iznits. Holy shiznits."

Iggy snorted. "Smooth, Gaz."

"Max, what do we do?" Nudge whispered, her dark chocolaty eyes wide, and a little frightened.

"I… I don't know." I admitted. "I'm not sure."

"We go after her." A resonant male voice cut in. I looked over a Fang, and found his onyx eyes locked on mine.

"Obviously." He continued. "We have to find her first. My blog is public domain; anyone can access it. If the white-coats were to watch the video and decide to find her…" He stopped, allowing us to fill in the blank.

I stood up, balancing easily on the branch. "Well then." I said briskly. "We go and find her then."

As I spread my wings, preparing to take off into the open sky, Angel's little voice stopped me.

"Max?"

I turned back. "Yeah, sweetie?"

She frowned at me, her light blue eyes troubled. "What did she mean, ' _when the world ended the first time'_?"

I paused, then crouched down in front of her. "I don't know, Angel." I said softly. "I mean, I think we would've noticed if the world had ended, y'know?"

Angel frowned. "But."

"Tell you what." I stood up, holding my hand out to her "Let's go find out."

She smiled sweetly, standing up and taking my hand. "But, Max, you're the leader. Shouldn't you know?" The confusion was gone from her eyes, replaced with something I couldn't name.

I slitted my eyes, wondering if this was yet another attempt to undermine my leadership. "C'mon, Ang. The boys are leaving us behind."

But as we spread our wings and leapt into the air, soaring into the sky, I couldn't help feeling a cold lump of dread, coiling in my stomach. Something wasn't right.

/\\\\\/

"Are you sure this is it?"

I stood, hand raised against the sun, looking down into the valley below us.

"Yup." Fang said, dark head bent over his open laptop.

I ran a critical eye over the small city - village? - at the mouth of Zion Nation Park in southern Utah. "It doesn't seem… big enough to even have computers. Does it even have Wi-Fi?"

Fang's dark eyes flicked to me briefly in irritation. "Of course."

"Max, it's so _pretty!_ " Nudge exclaimed, hands clasped together in happiness.

Looking around, I felt my traitorous little heart nod in silent agreement. The sun-beaten red rock almost glowed in the amber light of the setting sun.

See? Bird-kids can be poets, too.

"You're sure it came from here?" I asked skeptically.

"Yes." Fang still didn't sound perturbed.

"There's so many people; it's a freaking _nation park_. How could anyone - much less a bird-kid - live here, and not get discovered? Peoples are crawling all over _everything._ " I exclaimed, waving my hands at the shuttle buses full of hikers trudging along the dark maroon roads and the little itty-bitty ants jellyfishing their way up the red rock walls of the canyon.

"There's actually quite a bit of land that no-one goes onto." Fang softly corrected me.

"But still!" I said. "How can _no-one_ have found her yet?"

"After all." A metallic voice groaned from behind us. "We managed to find _you_."

I groaned, clenching my hands. " _Why_ haven't you people _given_ _up_ yet?!" I asked the sky, exasperated.

Then I spun and slammed my fist into the thing's face.

 _Crunch._

I staggered away, cradling my hand to my chest and biting back curses. It _hurt._ The first two knuckles on my right hand has split open, and the thing's face wasn't even _dented._

"Okay." I growled. "If that's how you wanna play, I'll oblige."

I swung my leg up into a high roundhouse kick, hitting it hard. It barely staggered backward. _What is_ _with_ _these things?_

Its angular green, laser-like eyes narrowed. "Hostile action has been taken." It announced.

"Yeah. That's what I do." I sassed.

"Initiating response." It whirred, dropping down into a fighting stance.

I smirked. "Finally. I might actually get a fight out of th-"

I rather suddenly found myself down on the ground, gasping for breath. I hadn't even seen the 'droid move.

It stood calmly, waiting for me to get back up. I leapt to my feet, rising onto the balls of my feet. Before either one of us could move, however, a dark blur slammed into it, throwing it back several feet.

Fang crouched lithely over the bot, whaling on it with closed fists.

From behind me, I heard Gazzy cry out.

He was limping badly, ankle twisted unnaturally.

I looked around at my flock. Angel was leading one of the bots on a wild goose chase, ducking into crevices and folds in the rock, dodging behind the stone pillars. Iggy was down on the ground, face twisted in pain as yet another 'droid applied careful pressure to his wings, forcing them nearly to the point where they would snap while a second one pinned him down.. Nudge was whimpering, her back pressed flat against a red cliff as three closed in, shallow cuts and scrapes scoring the smooth, tan skin of her forehead and cheek.

The thing, for lack of a better word, Fang had had held down suddenly surged forward, flipping Fang onto his back. I heard all of his breath rush out of him.

 _We are in serious, serious trouble._

I tensed, bringing my hand up in front of my face as one of the three pursuing Nudge found a new target: me.

I ducked under the roundhouse punch it threw, immediately returning with a rear-hand punch that should've connected with the large glowy thing in the middle of its chest. Before the blow could connect, it moved, parrying my hand and slamming its metal head into my not-metal head.

Stars burst into my vision, including one I was pretty sure was Saturn. It had rings and everything. By the time all the pretty colors had faded away, one of my hands was being pulled painfully up my spine, pulling the muscles in my shoulder unnaturally, and my other hand was away from me, twisted into a joint lock. My wrist felt like it was about to break, but that didn't stop me from struggling. The thing pushed me out away from itself, then pulled me back, wrenching me hard into its body, crushing my hand and jerking my shoulder back even further.

Looking around, I could see that all of my flock were in similar positions.

"Target achieved." The head bot stated, sounding more than a little smug.

"What are you going to do with us?" I snarled at it.

If it could've chuckled, it would've. "That is for us to know and you to-"

 _SNAP!_

My arm was nearly pulled out of its socket as the 'droid was suddenly thrown sideways by a tremendous force. It hit the ground a good twenty feet away.

"Hello, Max." A female voice said into my ear from behind.

Then she shoved me off the edge of the cliff.


	3. Chapter 3

I tumbled over the edge - very gracefully, of course - free-falling almost 300 feet before I managed to right myself and spreading my wings. I swept into a low, shallow arc, keeping close to the rock face. I flipped around, and began to swoop upward. My upward progress was stopped by Nudge hurtling past me, screaming. Without thinking, I caught her, cutting her cry off short.

"What is it? What's happening?" I demanded as she opened her wings shakily.

"The.. girl." She gasped. "From… from the…. video."

"What?" I released Nudge, letting her catch the air under her wings and flapped, propelling myself upward. I rose up over the edge just in time to duck as a bot went soaring.

I landed awkwardly, stumbling a little, just managing to not fall off again.

The girl, long blonde hair floating around her face, slammed her foot into the underside of the thing's head, snapping it back. She pivoted, rotating her hips to slam a powerful rear-handed punch dead center on another thing's chest, fracturing the glowy thing. Its eyes fizzled, then went dark. She parried the next one's attack, then brought her knee up into its abdomen, folding it in half. She brought her elbow down hard on the back of its head, nearly breaking it clean off.

It shuddered and sparked for a moment, then fell limply onto its side.

She straightened up, dragging the back of her hand over her mouth. She wasn't breathing hard at all.

The bots all lay in motionless heaps all around her. The rest of the flock were pressed back against the canyon wall, Fang placing himself between the girl and the younger children.

"That was _AWESOME_!" Gazzy said, ducking under Fang's arm. He approached the girl, still limping slightly, but beaming at the same time. "How'd you do that?"

The girl turned and just sort of gave him this _look_ that seriously questioned his mental stability.

She didn't respond, simply leveling her cool green gaze on me. "You should leave." She said evenly. "There'll be more soon, and it'll be better for everyone if no one is here when they arrive."

"So that's how it's going to be?" I demanded. "You pop up out of nowhere, rescue us, then tell us to get lost?"

She nodded. "Yes."

"Well, that's crap!" I growled. "You can't just walk off! What if they catch up to you again?"

"First of all, I'd be flying, not walking." She said, totally serious. "Second, they'll never stop chasing me. Sooner or later, of course they'll catch up to me."

"All the more reason to stick with us!" Gazzy exclaimed. "We can help!"

She leveled the Gasman with her cool green gaze. "I doubt that."

She turned her head back to me, then nodded once. 'See you around. Maybe."

As the girl turned to leap off the cliff top, I noticed something. "Wait!"

She tensed. "What?" She asked tersely.

"Your shoulder!"

"Yes?"

"Well, look at it!'

She blinked. "What am I supposed to be seeing?"

"It's been dislocated!"

"Oh." She studied it expressionlessly. "So it has."

She turned back. "Okay. Thanks for telling me. 'Bye."

"Do you want me to… Oh, I dunno, put that back into place for you?" Iggy said dryly, if a little anxiously.

She looked at her displaced shoulder, the way someone looks at the mess their child made with its mashed potatoes - for the upteenth time. "Nah, it'll be fine. It'll go back where it's supposed to be eventually, like it has before."

We stared at her in open-mouth horror.

"...What?" She asked, shifting a little uncomfortably.

"Oh, yeah." Angel said thoughtfully. "That's right. You can't feel pain-"

The girl's green eyes narrowed to cat-like slits, and she dropped into a deep, powerful stance. "How do you know that?" She demanded, pupils flitting between me and Angel. "I never told you that. Did they send you after me? _Did they?!"_

I raised my hands, surprised at the change in her demeanor. Indignance rose in my throat, forcing out words before I really had a chance to think about what they meant. "Yeah, well, that's your fault, isn't it?" I said testily. "You posted that video on the website, then expect people not to actually pay attention to what you said."

She went perfectly still, her eyes hard and aggressive. "What video?"


	4. Chapter 4

I gaped at her like a dead fish, a whole whirlpool of emotions swirling in me, each fighting to be expressed first. Indignation won out.

"What video?" I repeated. " _What video?!_ The video you posted on Fang's blog, the one that _lead us here_ , the one that-"

The girl - who'd I'd started thinking of as Goldilocks, because of her golden hair - glared at me, catlike eyes slitted. "That wasn't me."

"Of course it was!" I exclaimed, throwing my hands up in the air. "Who else -"

"I said, it wasn't me!" She snapped with equal vehemence.

Anger rose in my throat, and I opened my mouth to say something scathing when Iggy's head snapped up. "Something's coming." He warned. "I can hear engines. In the sky."

Goldilocks tilted her head. "He's right." Her emerald gaze swept over us, eyeing us critically. She seemed to make a decision, frustration and fury warring across her face. "Follow me." She snapped. She opened her enormous bat-like wings - massive black things that seemed far too big for her frame, arching high over her head - and leaped gracefully off the cliff.

I spun angrily on my heel, marching over to Fang. "What do you think?" I said, suddenly too tired to make decisions.

His dark eyes flicked almost imperceptibly in the direction Goldilocks had gone. "She saved us." He said softly.

"She might have an ulterior motive." I countered.

He met my eyes evenly. "Do we have a choice?"

He had a point - unfortunately. Now I could hear the engines, too - a high, keening wail that grated on my eardrums, even at this distance.

Something tugged on my sleeve. " _What_." I snapped, looking down. Angel's light blue eyes looked back. "It's okay, Max." She said calmly. "You can trust her. She doesn't want to hurt us. In fact, she feels kind of bad for us. She wants to help, in her own way."

I rolled my eyes. "Right, cause she's a touchy-feely softie like that." I said sarcastically.

"She hates being alone, so she doesn't want us to be alone." Angel said simply, her big blue eyes pure and earnest.

I gritted my teeth. " _Fine_. Whatever."

I turned back around, snapped _my_ wings open, and dove after her, my flock right behind me.

Goldilocks lead us across the canyon, to the north-north-east, up onto a broad expanse of uninhabited rolling hills, mountain crests peaking out over the top. She stopped directly in front of a blank cliff-face, smooth and white.

I stopped a little ways behind her, hovering more or less in one place. Her wings beat much slower and stronger than mine - they had to be almost twenty feet across. They glinted in the sunlight, not scaly, but not furry, either, just… something in between. She waited impatiently for the rest of the flock to catch up - not that it took very long, gosh - then shouted, "Watch closely!" She landed on a tiny ledge, fingers gripping onto the rock face, right next to a large chunk of rock clinging to the cliff. She leaned forward and - disappeared.

I gasped, then frowned, staring intently at the rock. Where had she gone? Then my eyes shifted focus, and I realized what I was looking at. In the shadow of the boulder ran a deep crack, wide enough for a person to fit through, if he or she was very skinny - which all of us are, not to brag or anything.

I did my best to emulate her actions, landing on the ledge, managing not to fall off, awkwardly crawling across the sheer surface, and forcing myself sideways through the crack. Looking up, it got wider at the top, sunlight peaking through in select places.

"Where are we?" Nudge said behind me.

"In the hall of the Mountain Queen." I said dryly, trying not to smash my nose into a rock wall.

I jumped, stifling a yelp, as something grabbed my wrist. Looking down revealed sunlight glinting off Goldilocks' luminescent jade eyes, staring up at me. "It's through here. Watch your head."

Crouching down, I felt a tunnel leading off to the side. I could hear Goldie crawling through it, on hands and knees, it sounded like. Muttering unhappily under my breath, I got down and followed.

The tunnel sloped gently upward for maybe fifty feet, then leveled out. I cautiously stood upright, feeling along the walls for the roof. I couldn't find it.

"Where are we?"

My voice echoed back to me, loud in the quiet. I could hear the sound of water dripping, and a droplet landed dead-center on my head. As if in response to my question, a spark jumped twenty feet away. I pressed my back against the wall, hissing in irritation when I realized it was wet, until I heard Fang and the others crawling out behind me. A tiny flame flickered, then grew bigger until I could see Goldilocks standing next to the growing fire, her eyes reflecting the flames. "Home." She said simply.


	5. Chapter 5

To the ten of you who've made it this far, I am sorry for the delay between postings. Hope you enjoy it anyway! :D

-Hawk

Hours later, after a lovely dinner of jackrabbit and a couple of mice - despite Gazzy and Iggy's best attempts to catch a deer - we sat in silence around the fire.

It was a nice cave, all things considered. Streams of water glistened on the walls, forty or fifty feet apart from one another and water droplets fell from the ceiling that I could just reach if I stood on my tiptoes. The little streams pooled in a shallow puddle on the side opposite us. The reddish-blackish soil was firm under my testing fingers, even if it was damp, more solid than mud.

Goldilocks had said barely a word to us since she'd lead us in here, totally cool with letting us talk amongst ourselves. She didn't interrupt or anything. Even when we'd brought in our catches, she just cooly and precisely told us how to set up the fire close to the entry tunnel so we wouldn't all suffocate, and also took the time to tell us where to put the inedible bits.

Now that we had completely and totally run out of any and all icebreakers we knew, (not that there were too many of those - we usually beat the crap out of people, not started conversations with them) a hush had settled in the cave - one that had been awkward at first, but now was sort of… comfortable. In a tense, I-can-still-hear-engines-overhead-once-in-a-while sort of way. Nevertheless, I could see the kiddies' eyes drifting shut. They were warm, they were fed, and there was very little chance of someone finding us here. I could see why Goldie had set up shop here.

"Do you want me to put your shoulder back into place?" I stiffened, then relaxed as I recognized Iggy's voice. After so long of not saying anything, the sound of a voice was a bit weird.

Goldilocks looked at him, her brow furrowed. "Why?"

"Y'know, so you can move it normally again?" Iggy said dryly.

She looked at him for a moment, her green eyes inscrutable, then nodded.

Iggy scooted closer, then reached out until he found her arm. He gently prodded at the injury, checking to see how bad it was. "You're lucky." He told her. "It wasn't very far out of place. It should be very easy to -"

With a twist of his wrist and carefully applied pressure, he popped the bone back into place.

I grimaced at the sound. It brought back all sorts of memories.

Goldie was staring at Iggy, her green eyes slitted. "You're blind?"

Usually, Iggy would've come back with some sort of snappish _No Freakin' Duh_ kind of response, but he just nodded, his mouth pressed together unhappily. "Yup."

"From birth, or…?"

Iggy shook his head, his expression taking on just a tiny hint of bitterness. "No. Scientists."

Goldilocks obviously caught the irony in his voice on the word "scientists' - I personally think "sadistic freaks" works just as well - because her gaze went hard. She understood what he meant. "They've screwed us all over, haven't they?"

I blinked. That wasn't what I'd expected her to say.

"I mean," She continued, gesturing at the flock. "Look at us. Wings. Blindness. Unable to feel pain. Constantly running. They've really messed us up."

I laughed humorlessly. "Oh, you don't know the half of it." Like, the fact that Angel could read minds, I have superspeed, Nudge is magnetic, Fang can blend in with any background, and _even our dog can talk._ Yeah. We're a little messed up.

Goldie started to respond, but got distracted by Iggy, who had gotten ahold of a strand of her hair.

"What are you doing?" She demanded.

Iggy's fingers kept brushing up and down over the bottom four inches, an expression of awe on his face. "It's so... bright."

She scowled at him, but, for some reason didn't pull away. "What are you talking about?"

"I can sense colors." He told her. "And your hair… It's like firelight."

I had no freakin' idea how Iggy knew what the color of _firelight_ was, but I wasn't going to ruin the moment by saying that out loud. To be honest, I kind of agreed. Especially with the light of the fire glinting off it, making it almost glowed in the darkness.

Look, I've gotten poetic again. I'm so proud of myself: That's twice in one story.

"Ember." Angel said suddenly.

We all turned to look at her.

"What did you say, sweetie?" I asked.

She glanced at me, her blue eyes wide, then looked over at Goldilocks. "I think your name should be Ember." She said sweetly. "Y'know, like the little glowy bits that float out of the fire?"

"Ember." She said the name, testing it out. "Ember."

"Yeah." A faint smile lifted her lips as she stared at the ground in thought. Her green eyes were ever so slightly softer than usual. For the first time, I could see her as a teenager, not the grown-up, kick-butt warrior she'd been up to that moment. " 'Ember.' I like that."

Angel beamed, and Iggy's fingers began cheerfully weaving the lock of golden hair into a braid.

I had no idea where he'd learned how to braid, either.


End file.
